In premise or field wiring of buildings and facilities such as for telephone, computer and various business machine interconnections, a wide variety of techniques are employed. These include crimping employing an electrical terminal crimped to the wire, usually with a precision tool; soldering wherein the wire is soldered to a terminal employing a soldering tool, appropriate flux and appropriate solder and skill; screw down terminals wherein a stripped wire is trapped beneath a screw mounted on a terminal block and manipulated typically with a screwdriver; and by employing the IDC concept wherein the wire is driven into a slot in a metal member arranged to strip the insulation from the wire and provide a gas type seal of the conductor through deformation thereof with spring elements elastically deformed by wire insertion. All of these techniques have their advantages and disadvantages relating to quality of termination, speed of termination or productivity potential and the cost of labor, terminal and tool. As a general rule, screw down terminals have been widely used in the field where relatively few are done at a time as contrasted with the factory where many terminations are done per shift. This preference is tied to the limited availability of special tools to contractors and craftsmen responsible for wire and component installation; all of them having readily available screwdrivers, pliers, nippers and the like, the use of which is not only necessary for component installation but obvious and well understood as compared with special crimp, solder or IDC tools. Despite this preference, the screw-down termination has its shortcomings, particularly with respect to a determination of whether or not a given screw termination has been turned down sufficiently tight to adequately compress the wire and store elastic energy within the screw and in the wire so as to effect an adequate and long term termination. A screw down fitting may be readily not turned down tight enough or alternatively, turned down so tight that wire damage can be done leading to excessive deformation and breakage. Of the various techniques employed, the IDC concept which utilized the displacement of a wire into a slot of a contact spring system tends to eliminate the potential for under or over deformation of the wire.
Thus it is by way of background that the objective of the present invention is to provide the controlled deformation of a conductor wire including insulation stripping employing the IDC concept in conjunction with a screw down fitting. It is a further object of the invention to provide a connector and termination concept allowing the use of simple tools such as screwdrivers for field termination of conductor wires while providing a degree of certainty built into the termination mechanism to result in an improved field termination of conductor wire. Finally, it is an object of the invention to provide a screw down type IDC termination particularly adapted for use in the field.